Matthew 7:15-21

BEWARE!

‘Beware of false prophets.… Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven.’

Matthew 7:15

The Sermon on the Mount ends with four remarkable warnings. Only the last three are included in the passage read. To grasp the full meaning of these, however, we must take notice of the first of the four, which is the key to the whole passage.

I. Beware of the crowd.—‘Enter ye in by the narrow gate.’ This warning is against the danger of supposing that what ‘everybody does’ and what ‘everybody thinks’ cannot be far wrong, and that therefore one may adjust one’s standards, one’s ideals of what God expects of us, by the standard which prevails amongst the multitude of mankind around us. The principles laid down by Christ Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount are not those put into practice by the Christian Church as a whole; they do not govern the lives of the great mass of people who call themselves ‘Christians,’ and who claim their religious privileges as followers of Christ. What is it then that has brought us into the position in which we find ourselves to-day, when the great mass of working-men turn their backs entirely upon the Church of God?

II. Beware of false prophets.—It is because of false preaching. It is because of the preaching of a shallow Christianity, which has left the hearts and lives of men unchanged, untouched, and simply covered up things with a promise of forgiveness of sins. It is because the way of salvation has been made easy and broad, instead of narrow and deep. Now see what the Master says about this popular Christianity. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’ That settles the point. You see what it means. You and I have got to accept such principles, and live such lives in consequence, that if others did the same, earth would become a paradise. That is the only fruit that will bear witness to the tree of true principle, viz. its regenerating effect on society. We are always thinking that Christianity ends with simply turning to, or looking to, Jesus, or with calling upon Him. It does nothing of the sort. It only begins there, and if it stops there, there is something wrong with it. ‘… He that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.’

III. Beware of workers of iniquity.—There must be the changed character and the changed life, as an outcome and a proof and a manifestation of Jesus Christ having been received into the soul. Nothing else but this will do, or bear the test of the judgment day. No eloquence, no preaching power (even if it can sway thousands), no reform of public morals, no success in social, religious, or philanthropic work, will take the place of, or be a substitute for, the embodying of the character of Jesus Christ in the life of the Christian. So our Lord proceeds, ‘Many will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord … depart from Me, ye that work iniquity.’ What an awfully solemn warning this is, is it not?

IV. Christ our example.—Do you see how our Lord is narrowing down the sphere of guidance to which we are to look, until at last He fixes our gaze simply and solely on Himself? Whence are we to take our ideals? Simply from Christ, and even then we are to beware lest the teaching of Christ float about in our mind as ‘ideal,’ instead of being accepted as the practical working principles and foundations of the character, on which the life itself with all its activities shall be reared.

—Canon T. Brocas Waters.